Each of the affected schools will get a capital grant to upgrade their facilities.

'No closures'

The Minister said she wanted to stress that schools would not be closing due to the amalgamation process.

She said all staff contracts would be honoured.

"At the moment these sites attract double the leadership positions. Now that will change, the leadership positions will change, there's no doubt about that, but that does not mean there is less people in the system overall," she said.

School support staff had expressed fears for some of their jobs if the amalgamations proceeded.

SA Opposition education spokesman David Pisoni said it was a backward step for the affected communities.

"Local schools should be managed by their local communities and what this announcement's done today is proven that the government prefers to ignore local communities and take advice from Treasury over that of educators," he said.

The leadership positions will change, there's no doubt about that, but that does not mean there is less people in the system overall

Grace Portolesi

"Many of these schools are not convinced that they won't be seeing fewer education resources in their schools after these amalgamations.

"The Government hasn't been clear on that and this is what concerns parents, so the minister needs to explain to parents 'What are the improved educational outcomes that will come from these cuts?'"

The Australian Education Union said the amalgamations would take millions of dollars out of the education budget.

It said the decision stripped up to $300,000 from each school, amounting to about $6 million in all.

"Our members and communities in these schools are devastated by this decision. The reality is when you take this money away from schools there will be job losses and there will be cuts to student programs," said union official Correna Haythorpe.

Kerry Faggoter from the Save Our Schools lobby group is angry the Government has proceeded with its plan.

"I'm absolutely disgusted that this Government has not listened to the communities, not listened to the review process and have gone and done what they probably set out to do anyway," she said.